


Proposition in Red

by TechnicolourRomantics



Category: Duran Duran
Genre: 1980s, Food Metaphors, Friendship/Love, Fruit, Innuendo, M/M, Pre-Slash, Senses, Snapshots, Strawberries, The Crucial Three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:01:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23116642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TechnicolourRomantics/pseuds/TechnicolourRomantics
Summary: To watch Nicholas and his strawberries - a double act and an offer.
Relationships: Simon Le Bon/Nick Rhodes/John Taylor (Duran Duran)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	Proposition in Red

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there! Prompted by a dear friend of mine with one word: strawberries. Coincidentally Nick's favourite fruit :)) So I've managed to go off and turn it into this thing. 😋 
> 
> Also, it seems I've unwittingly jumped onto the S/N/J bandwagon, though I'm sure no one here minds. 😉
> 
> Also also, if you’ve been having a rough time, I hope things get better for you. 🥰💚 I’m here for you guys and so grateful for the wonderful reading community here of loving Duranies!
> 
> Anyways, read and enjoy!

_**1986** _

Just like how they remembered it, how _he_ remembered it, the framed spray art of the tulip hanging in the corridor, greeting them. Greeting him, anyway. Simon had been round here like clockwork in the time he'd been absent, careening off and intertwining his hands in the Power and the Station.

Hearing his loud voice drift out from the back end of the house, he realised Simon had come early now, or he had come quite late. _Fashionably,_ he told himself.

  
  


Decked in casual suits and abstract printed shirts gifted to them on their last occasion as a trio to a friend’s party, they were hunched around the kitchen island of Nick’s home, alone to discuss the proceedings of their record.

Light shone down bright upon them from the overhead stained Art Deco lamp, bringing out the telltale darker roots amidst Nick's new golden crown, perpetually held up with spray and performance, even in the comfort of his home.

Simon had embraced the roots of his own, and John… well the mullet was now cropped, but the familiar brown streaked gold had stayed. 

Nick occupied one side while the other two sat across him, able to gaze easily to his eyes, made up all faint and smoky, a pledge to being restrained, all double entendres included, rather than dressing excessively. 

There was an anticipated lull in conversation, slowing to a standstill as the crickets started to chirp outside, heralding in the vast spread of the sunset and lilac sky, on show through the living room window.

Conversation had flowed on as the day had passed and night began its steady path - about records, families, genres, food, personal preferences, things they hadn't done in a while, during their parting. 

Things they hadn't gotten up to, in awhile, together. 

And how interesting it was that Julie also wasn't home, out at a girls get-together appointment.

Just the three of them alone.

But the familiarity and friendship had easily come again, warming up their space as they ate together, left-over pasta shared comfortably between them.

All three of them were grateful, that the acrimony that they feared would settle between them post two-way split never did. 

And as always, with their friendships came the question of something else. To come close, or even _closer._

There was no denying their electricity.

"Want a berry?" Nick gestured to the bowl, strawberries after dinner a pastime for him, no hiding the fact that he loved to indulge in his favourite fruit so often. 

That and strawberries had many a time been the catalyst for something between them. 

The other two declined. Solely so they could focus on Nick.

_We're really here again, aren't we._

_Indeed we are._ Nick's internal thoughts lowered in pitch, so knowing of how much the Taylor was suggesting with his eyes.

_Acquaintances?_ It offered.

Simon and himself had become much, much acquainted in the past few months. In the nights alone, studio, or at home. In the bed, the desks, the floors.

The mornings, the evenings. 

The tops, the bottoms.

The touch, the possession. 

The intimacy, the fire.

Pulling John into the mix was only natural.

The Rhodes’ prized metal fruit-bowl with colander-like holes sat alongside the kitchen wall, though he would have rathered an awful cocktail stain smack bang in the middle of his Price suit than admit that his fruit-bowl could’ve been used for rinsing boiled pasta.

Nick reached out to it, picking cinematically at the bushel of strawberries sitting right on the chrome rim with a practiced twist of the stalk. 

He looked it over, making sure it was a good one in his book, that it had the essential volume and the deep red glazed coat that shone amongst the seed grooves. 

His pale hand roved carefully along the berry, feeling the coarseness against his soft, chopstick fingers. 

No passionless checks here, _or in front of Simon and John._

And their gazes bored into him, all while he seemed to be unaware of the consequences of his actions, lest for the knowing smirk that ghosted across. 

Playing to their unspoken ideals, he brought the strawberry right to his thick lips, wrapping them lusciously around the fruit with the tip disappearing right into his mouth.

Sucking hard as a prelude, and taking a fierce bite afterward.

Nick brushed a stray blonde strand that fell into his eyes as the sweetness enveloped him, in union with the cutting sourness. There was a duality in the berry that gave him a kick, feeling privvy to the tastes right atop his tongue as they fought for dominance. 

Packaged right there, in a bite, for him.

Opposite his reverie, John drummed excessively on the countertop, watching. 

Next to him, the singer was poised casually, legs crossed on the bar seat, watching. 

The overstepping shift in the air that had swirled around Nick’s home now felt tangible, and they all knew it. But who else, would they sit around with, talking _Notorious,_ eating strawberries, and transgressing, if not each other?

Strawberry juice that wandered down Nick’s chin solidified the suggestion. It sculpted its way down, painting a carmine path against the soft skin there, taking the powdered residue of foundation along with it on the thin, wet trail. 

He brushed it off nonchalantly with his thumb, licking it off the tip of his finger and allowing a dashing sliver of pink tongue to peek through in full view. With the makeup, a faint chalkiness now joined the mix on his palate, infused in the strawberry and salty sweat left on his skin.

The tongue teased a hello, snaking out to capture the liquid sweetness and retreating back, though not before it beckoned, for the others to join it. 

_Perhaps a play-date later on?_

John adjusted himself in his seat and Simon likewise, reacting to the offer, and it was only with the loud scrape of his trouser hemming on the wood of the chair that Nick looked back up expectantly with a bouncing smile, universes away from his taunting just prior.

"What's wrong? You can take them too if you like." He pushed the fruit-bowl gently towards them.

His eyelashes fluttered, swathed with feigned innocence, reprimanding those eyes as they raked over him, for their suggestive conduct. Highly immoral, out-of-line. How could he, a man of virtue, ask for such a thing? 

The men ignored the mocking distraction and carried on, studying him across the far distance of the white countertop that seemed to stretch between them.

Black eddies in the cool marble created miles between them, as Nick again left earth and returned to indulging in his scarlet companion. 

They couldn’t care less about the bloody red fruit, in all sense of the phrase. Didn’t take more than a quirk of the brow between them to confirm, agree and accede to their shared end goal. 

The man himself, the objective of their thrilling chase. 

Maddening, how John, and Simon, would so quickly give Nicholas exactly what he wanted, what _they_ wanted, when he paved out the route so effortlessly. 

_Dangle a promise of reward. And let those dilated blues and browns watch._

Too easy to lap on his most beloved strawberries. 

It was almost audible, the momentary flicking scream of static, as Simon and John simultaneously switched programmes in their mind’s television. Envisioning lead roles, co-stars, in Nick’s pretty pictures.

No mind, the night was young. And the house was empty. 

Ample time to fulfill his proposition, laid out bare from that first pull of his mouth against the pliant skin of the fruit. Delicately asked, proposition in red.

And later, laid out bare, mouths would pull on his own pliant skin. Proposition fulfilled, in bed. 

Heady with the intoxicating taste of duality - the honeyed push and pull for dominance between three of them, sour and sweet. 

**Author's Note:**

> Duran Duran - where stakes are high and eating fruit is foreplay? Yeah, I'm sure that's canon somehow 😂🍓


End file.
